Dempsey: Good teams don’t give up layups

The Bearcats defense starts with a simple philosophy of guarding the paint. They’d rather give up 3-point shots instead of scoring opportunities in the paint, but that approach has been pushed to its limits the last three games.

“We have a phrase we call guard the yard,” BU coach Tommy Dempsey explained. “The yard is the green area on our court, that’s the paint. We do a good job of keeping it out of the paint off the dribble. We do a good job of keeping it out of the post, for the most part. To do that though, because we don’t have great one-on-one defenders, it’s coming from the help.”

Cornell University, Colgate University, and University of Hartford each made at least 10 3-pointers in victories against the Bearcats as Dempsey’s squad succeeded in protecting the paint. Frustrating as it may be, Dempsey is sticking to his guns as he tries to lay the foundation for the program.

“Good teams don’t give up a lot of layups, and that’s kind of where we’ve started this thing. We’re going to guard the yard and be tough and be physical inside, trying to rebound the ball. Last game, we gave up too many offensive rebounds and two big ones against Cornell, but we are out-rebounding our opponents and we’re not a big athletic team. I think if you were to focus on the positives, we’ve gotten some of that done.

“Our last three opponents have taken almost 100 threes (97). I think that we’ve forced 100 threes because we’re guarding the yard, and teams have made them against us (laughs) but I think our players are really focusing on things we’ve asked them to focus on. That’s really one of the things that I really like about the group. Do we have to recover to shooters quicker? Yes. Do we have to make an adjustment against a team like Albany that has two great shooters? We do, but one thing about our club is we’re asking them to do certain things and they are. That’s something that we’re real happy with.”